


Reality Shows

by Paraprosdokia (ChangeableConsistency)



Series: Unconnected Phil Coulson Fics [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternative realities, Gen, Phil and Tony friendship, Reality Hopping, blink and you’ll miss it (no really) Phil/Pepper, misuse of nonsense science, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 16:11:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21256094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangeableConsistency/pseuds/Paraprosdokia
Summary: This is why Phil avoids Tony’s lab.





	Reality Shows

There’s a flash and then a quiet, “Oof.” His knees and palms ache from where they’ve landed on the metal grating/concrete/tile.

The same second pain rips through his mind and Phil pinches the bridge of his nose as he holds in a scream. It’s like the world’s worst ice cream headache combined with an acid trip. His head is full of memories not his own. Different timelines, different realities.

“I’m not going to ask again. Who are you and how did you get in here?”

Phil looks up to see Tony Stark in an oil stained jumpsuit pointing a gun at him.

Phil looks up to see Tony Stark in an oil stained jumpsuit, one hand in an Iron Man glove, the blue light of the repulsor glowing ominously.

Phil looks up to see Toni Stark in an oil stained jumpsuit, the skin of her palm glowing blue.

Phil looks up to see...

Phil looks up...

Phil looks...

“Oh, God, stop, just STOP!” He holds out his hand and the images freeze; collecting, colliding, and then coalescing into a single Stark menacing him with a wrench, the top half of his jumpsuit tied around his waist and the blue of the arc reactor seeping through his dark tank top.

“Yeah, I’m going need an answer there, Brooks Brothers/Agent Smith/Copperfield.”

“I just— I just need you all to stop spinning for a second,” Phil holds his other hand up and tries to project a calm he isn’t feeling. He’d known going in that it was going to be overwhelming he just hadn’t counted on it being this bad.

He had thought that there would be something to tell him that he was tumbling through realities, but much like the sun appears to circle the Earth, it’s the opposite. It feels like the Stark in front of him keeps changing when in reality Phil is the one changing.

Iron Man freezes. It’s hard to tell through the armor but he seems surprised, “How do you know—How could you possibly know who I am?” While three other Stark’s say, “I’m going to ask you one more time and then I’m going to turn you into a toaster strudel/s’more/crispy critter.”

“My name is Phil Coulson.”

“Who?” “Bullshit, Phil Coulson is dead.” “Yeah, Agent, I know who you are, I just don’t know why you’re down/up in my lab.”

“I apologize, I believe I’m going to be sick.”

“Zzzstchkzz -ear me? Com- zzzsstchk, -gent? Breaker break- zzzsstchk niner. Coulson, do you read?”

“Copy. I can honestly say I never thought I’d be this happy to have your voice in my head. Things are… fluctuating.”

“What are you talking about?” Oh, no. Now there are eight of them, interchanging and overlapping faster than he can blink.

“Just a moment Mr.- er Ms. um Starks.”

“What’s happening?” His Stark asks while there is a cacophony of, “That’s it, tell me what’s going on or I shoot.” “Seriously, what is going on?” “How do I know you’re the real Agent, Agent?”

“It’s getting worse.”

“Use the cosmonanites to synchronize your reality distortion field’s oscillation to the localized delimitation-“

“English!”

“Think harder about the reality you want to see.”

It takes a beat but then it’s just Wrench Stark; he seems like the one most open to discussion.

“Okay. I think I’m getting the hang of this,” Phil says, slowly lowering his hands.

“Hey! Security is on their way, so why don’t you just stay as you are Brooks Brothers.”

“You used that one already,” except that had been the blue-eyed Tony, so maybe not.

“I what now?”

“Ask him- um me, if I have the-”

“I’ve got it now, Mr. Stark, thank you,” Phil says to the Stark in his ear, though it’s more like bone conduction. Or maybe telepathy. He turns his attention back to Iron Man; shit, he needs to focus on Wench Stark, “We need your help, Mr. Stark. Specifically we need your trans-temporal breaching device.”

“You need a broken time machine?”

“It’s not broken, it just doesn’t do what you think it does. Do you have it or not?”

“Wait, time machine? Did he— I? He. Did he just call it a time machine? That’s so… so… so mundane,” his Stark says.

“Not now, Stark.”

“What?” Toni says.

“Not you.”

“Not me what? And why are you flickering?” Asks a Stark in a three piece suit, while Wrench Stark asks, “What do you mean it doesn’t do what I think it does?”

Pepper Potts walks in, “Who’s your friend, Tony?”

Pepper Potts walks in and screams.

Pepper Potts walks in and gasps, “Phil?! You’re alive? How?”

His ex-wife Pepper Potts walks in and growls, “What the hell is he doing here?”

‘God damnit, Phil,’ he thinks, ‘Concentrate.’

Most of the Peppers disappear and he’s back to just Wrench Stark and the 1st Pepper.

“It’s complicated, Potts. You were saying, Phil?”

Hearing Stark call him Phil may be the weirdest part of this whole thing.

“According to Stark— my Stark, it isolates a bubble about ten feet across outside of time.”

“Suuuuure it does. So, if you have one, why do you need mine?”

“In my home reality, some idiot—”

“Hey! Hurtful.”

“Turned it on; it malfunctioned, few seconds after he set it off the bubble formed around the point it had been held at when it was initialized. Unfortunately, the device is sitting right outside the bubble, where we can’t reach it. ‘Luckily’—”

“Don’t think that I can’t hear sarcasm, Agent,” Phil tries to block out his Stark’s voice, but considering the fact that it feels like it’s coming from inside his own head, he doesn’t have much success.

“—His reality warping bugs—”

“Cosmonanites.”

“—Were inside the barrier, along with their control unit, which my Stark is operating from our side of reality.”

“And after getting you frozen outside of time, you agreed to let me— him pump your blood full of another experimental piece of tech?”

“Anything’s better than being trapped with him in a ten foot bubble until we starve to death. Or run out of air, whichever comes first.”

“I told you, we won’t run out of air. The barrier is technically permeable, we just can’t cross it because we would age so quickly, relatively speaking—”

“Still, you must really trust him.”

Phil sighs, “Against every ounce of my better judgment.”

“Aww, you like me. You really like me.”

“Okay, you can have it.”

“Thank you.”

“One condition.”

Phil raises an eyebrow.

“Bleed for me?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I want a sample of the reality warping bugs— God there’s got to be a better name.”

“COS-MO-NAN-ITES!”

Phil rubs his ear, though of course it does nothing to stop the ringing, “Fine. Let’s just get this over with. I’m missing Undercover Boss.”

“I told you, it should be like no time passed at all once we pop the bubble.”

“Do you not have DVRs in your reality?”

“Your use of the word ‘should’ makes that sentence a lot less comforting that you’d think.”

In the end, it doesn’t take that long for Wrench Tony, Toni, and a shaken Pepper to get a sample of his blood.

Pepper kisses him on the cheek.

Pepper slaps him.

Three Tony’s and Toni shake his hand.

“Goodbye, Phil. It was really, really good to see you again,” Pepper/Pepper/Tony says.

“Okay, Stark, pull me back.”

“Hang on to your tidy whities, this may sting a bit; I had to send you a bit further from home than was entirely safe just to be sure I wasn’t just sending you to a reality that was also trapped in a temporal bubble.”

“That’s terrifying, considering your definition of ‘safe’.”

There’s a flash and then a quiet, “Oof.” His knees and palms ache, they had been sore from before, landing on the concrete of Stark’s lab a second time hasn't done him any favors.

Stark helps him to stand and then snaps the trans-temporal breaching device out of his hand, makes a few small adjustments and presses a button with a “Hah!”

“All good?”

“Yeah, couple minutes and we should be all synced up.”

“Ah!” Phil feels a little nauseous, hearing Stark in front of him and in his head, “There’s that ‘should’ again, Stark. And the reality bugs?”

“Cosmo— You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Heh. Sure you don’t. I’m on to you, Agent,” Stark messes with the cosmonanite controls and the weird feedback loop stops, “Don’t worry, they’ll flush out of your system over the next couple of days.”

“Good. Well. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go indulge in some fake reality; I’ve had my fill of real realities for the day.”

“Hey, Phil?” Yep. Still weird, “Thanks for trusting me.”

Phil now has memories of a dozen different lives, a dozen different Starks, and not all of them as good as his. Out of all of them to be stuck with, this one may be his favorite.

Not that he can ever let the man know; Stark’s ego doesn’t need that kind of a boost. Still, he deserves something. He may have gotten them into that mess, but he also got them out of it.

“Any time, Tony. Any time.”


End file.
